


six shooter

by centuriesofexistence



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Action & Romance, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Modern Assassins, Other tags to be added, Rival assassins, shades of Mr and Mrs Smith, some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2018-12-05 17:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centuriesofexistence/pseuds/centuriesofexistence
Summary: Lexa prefers contract killer. Brutally precise and efficient. Blood for money—no other attachments.Clarke prefers hitwoman. More force, more room for improvisation.Neither of them prefer crossing paths with each other. In fact, they openly loathe it: crossing paths usually results in threats, violence, gunfire, the occasional chase and at least one instance of bondage.But when Clarke and Lexa are hired by different clients to kill the same target, their paths won’t only cross, but converge. Explosively.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Finally getting around to posting the start of a fun little side project I've been working on. It won't be nearly as long as my other works, but it's a fast, enjoyable write and hopefully a fast and enjoyable read. No set schedule for updates but I love it too much to be away from it long.
> 
> I'll be posting additional content on my tumblr @centuriesofexistence so go there to get bonuses!

There are few things as freeing and refreshing as a springtime neighborhood farmer's market in a busy city. The street shut down, the locals out with tables of organically farmed produce, bouquets of flowers, handmade jewelry. It's a quaint slice of small town life inserted in the middle of the downtown skyscrapers and dirty city streets. Even with the crowds, it recalls simpler times, places more open and free than the daily throttle of the city.

For Lexa, this crowd is the most appealing part. She slips among the bodies, never stepping on any toes, never brushing shoulders. A hoodie, a leather jacket, a baseball cap pulled low. She sees everyone, and almost no one notices her. It's a cultivated talent. She's a ghost. And that's why she's so damn good.

She pauses at a flower stand overflowing with rainbows of blossoms: it's one of many, so most everyone around her walks by without a second glance, but Lexa sees the details, running her fingers over the delicate stem of an orchid, comparing it to the bunch of peonies and the mixed bouquet of spring flowers. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a pretty blonde girl twenty yards away, laughing at something a vendor says as he hands her a drink. She’s radiant, the kind of girl made for Saturday morning farmer’s markets and loose dresses, and for a brief second, Lexa wonders which flowers this girl would like the best. Or if she would like any at all. Despite the April chill in the air, she's dressed for summer, but there's a wintery look about her that Lexa can’t quite pin down.

Tulips, calla lilies, amaryllis...they'd suit the blonde girl. And she looks the type to pretend she doesn't like them, before displaying them in the brightest part of her home.

Someone pushes past Lexa, jostling her, and it ends her brief foray into a more innocent world as quickly as it began. She pulls her thoughts away from the pretty girl—she probably has some handsome stranger to buy her flowers—and pulls her fingers away from the stem of the orchid. She slips her fingers into her jacket, like a nervous tic, if it were possible for her to get nervous.

Brushing her fingers against the elegant barrel of her handgun makes her smile just the way the flower had.

" _Focus, Lexa,_ " comes Anya's voice over her earpiece, like a goddess watching over her. "Are you in position?"

"I'm in position," Lexa murmurs back.

"The target is delayed by four minutes. Take a lap so no one notices you."

Obediently, Lexa sets off from the stand and strolls through the crowd, wholly unconcerned with the impatient voice in her ear and the gravitas of the hour. Nervous people draw attention. People avoiding eye contact, people with hoods up, people who look threatening—witnesses remember those people. Lexa is even better at blending in than she is at killing, and she's damn good at killing.

She’s always been observant; she’s a studious, quiet girl, skills that have lent themselves amazingly to the emulation of an average citizen, when she is anything but. She sidles through a circuit of stalls, admiring first the buckets of ice filled with fresh oysters; then yet another flower stand; and then moving on to linger at table covered in handmade Tibetan jewelry. She gives the elderly woman behind the table a genuine smile, making a mental note to return to the stall before she leaves today to pick up something for Anya. It would make her smile.

But the innate clock in her head counts down the seconds, and Lexa has to glide back to her spot near the flower stand before long. When she’s confident no one is watching, she murmurs into her collar:

"I’m back in position. You have eyes on both of us?"

"Just him. You're out of the line of sight of the hotel camera across the street. He and four security guards are exiting the car now."

"Good."

"Forty yards to your right. Taking their time to push through the crowd. Patience."

"Got it."

Lexa steps closer to the flower stand, inhaling deeply—to everyone else, she's a young woman breathing in the scent of two spring bouquets, when the reality is that she's steeling her nerves and centering her mind. The people streaming past her in droves don't notice. That's another great thing about this market: it's packed with bodies that will provide her the distraction, cover for the assassination, and let her vanish among them as she escapes. Cage Wallace rarely makes these kind of public appearances, but the recent PR hit his company took after some insider trading became public mandates that he be seen engaging with his community to make the corporation look better. Coming back to his roots. A man of the people, he thinks himself safe today because of the crowd and his cabal of security guards. A false sense of security has provided this opening, and it likely won’t happen again. The short walk he'll take from his car on the open street, through the farmer's market, and into his hotel nearby hotel is Lexa's only low-risk chance to fulfill this contract.

"Thirty yards. Should be visible."

Her finger hovers over the trigger in her pocket. Not that of her gun, but the release for the rigged flower stall. She glances to her right to confirm visual contact. Cage Wallace approaches through the crowd, easy smile on his face, standing out from everyone around him not only for the four beefy guards surrounding him, but also for his pressed Italian suit, the flashes of gold on his wrists, ostentatious displays of wealth from the billionaire who throws the family fortune into illegal deals and operations across the globe.

As he passes the stall, she'll trigger the release and make it collapse, sending her and the others around her—including Cage—stumbling back in what looks like an accident. This will provide the half-second opportunity she needs to inject him with a syringe from her pocket, without him noticing her or the pinprick of pain. By the time the toxin takes effect hours later, she'll be gone, nothing more than a memory of a shadowed face among the crowd.

And she'll be a few million dollars wealthier.

"Twenty yards," Anya tells her. "Ready?"

But Lexa doesn't answer.

“Lexa?”

She’d given her surroundings a final precautionary sweep, and her attention had once again stuck on the blonde girl from earlier. But the young woman is no longer relaxed: she has stopped chatting with stall workers, she’s set aside her drink, she’s stopped looking around at the farmer’s market entirely. Instead she stands perfectly still, staring past Lexa, waiting.

Lexa has trained. Lexa has travelled the world, killing for hire. She has instincts. And every instinct in her body screams that something is not right when she sees the look on the girl’s face.

"Lexa? Twelve yards." Anya's pressing now: silence from Lexa goes against their protocol. "I—wait, _fuck_!"

"What?" Lexa demands, jarred back to life by Anya's sudden panic.

"I just lost all camera feeds, I'm totally blind. Hold on." She can hear Anya typing as fast as possible. "They're—they're all down. Every camera on the block. Wallace is right on top of you. Fuck, Lexa get out."

"Anya—"

"Something's wrong, _get out, now!"_

She takes one step away from the flower stall and freezes in place when she looks toward the blonde girl again, even as Anya shouts frantically for her to abandon the mission. As Lexa stares at her, like a spectator in her own sport, the blonde girl reaches into her pocket and then tosses something into the trash can beside her

Three, four, five seconds—Lexa counts, heart pounding—and then the trashcan begins to issue copious amounts of thick black smoke.

"Fuck, Anya," Lexa realizes, her voice a low hiss as she slips a hand into her coat for her gun. "There's another player."

And as she says it, the blonde girl notices Lexa watching her. She's been trained too: recognition dawns on her face in an instant.

The two women go for their guns at the same moment and all hell breaks loose.

The blonde draws a half-second earlier, taking aim at Lexa as she dives for cover behind an industrial barbecue, but Lexa is quicker, pressing the button to blow the flower stall. It comes down spectacularly, the canopy, table, and flower racks flying forward with crashes and bangs, sending people stumbling; the bodies and the explosion of flower petals give Lexa the half-second she needs to dive behind a mailbox.

Gunfire rips through the air and the glass storefront behind her head shatters.

The blonde isn't holding back.

The crack of gunfire and the growing cloud of black smoke billowing from the trashcan throw the farmer's market into chaos: people are screaming, sprinting, falling over each other in a base-instinct stampede for safety. Anya is yelling in her ear, but Lexa can’t hear anything over the sound of her own breathing. She’s centered. Fingers tight on her handgun, she leans around the mailbox to take aim. Between the running civilians, she can catch glimpses of blonde hair and the flash of a weapon, but there’s no clear shot. She pulls back into cover with a snarl. At least the blonde won’t take innocent bystanders either. They’re on even footing, as far as that goes.

She shifts to the other side of the mailbox to look down the row of market stalls: Cage Wallace is running. His form is hidden by the group of black-suited bodyguards as they race back to his armored car. A low risk kill is out of the question now, but so is failre. She’ll be damned if she lets another killer take this from her.

She fires a shot into the air to force the girl back into cover and then explodes from behind the mailbox. Her combat boots serving her well as she sprints through the market, hurdling fallen civilians and abandoned carts and bags with an agile, cat-like grace. A predator, in the truest sense, gun in hand and arms pumping. Wallace has a head start to the safety of his car but if she can make up enough distance, get a clear shot, she only needs half a chance…

And then she's tackled to the ground from behind.

Lexa hits the ground so hard she bounces and rolls, her gun flying from her hand and clattering across the pavement. Legs circle her waist and an arm pins her shoulders to the ground, and Lexa sees just a flash of blonde hair above her before she lashes out with a fist and connects with s _omething_ that sends the girl tumbling back just enough to allow Lexa to scramble clear. She’s on her feet, scooping up her gun, and sprinting again in half a second, but so is the blonde, right on her heels.

But their scuffle stole precious seconds, allowing Cage Wallace to dive into his car; Lexa stops short when she knows her chances are shot, with a snarled _“fuck!”;_ the blonde keeps running. Ten yards past Lexa, she reaches into her pocket, pulls out a small device, and flings it as hard as she can toward the car just as the door slams shut. Whatever she threw explodes a half second later, rocking the car to the side but doing no damage. Tires squeal. Then he’s gone. And her chance is missed. It’s over.

Police sirens echo off the skyscrapers. All around them, people are still running, screaming for their friends or family; Lexa and the blonde girl stand motionless among the tide, shell-shocked.

"Lexa! _Lexa!_ " Anya is still screaming through the earpiece. "What's happening? I have no feeds, I can't guide you, just run!"

The blonde turns to look at Lexa, eyes narrowed. She takes aim at Lexa, and Lexa takes Anya's advice.

_Run._

 

*

 

Despite the public setting, this was never a job she was supposed to run for. The toxin still in her pocket was supposed to take effect hours later, allowing Lexa to waltz past Cage Wallace after injecting him and never been caught, if she had so desired. Not that she would have. She's not stupid or arrogant, she knows when to run—hell, on Anya's final field mission, they'd sprinted over a mile down an airstrip after they realized their intel was bogus. Making a fast, desperate escape from a rival assassin through a crowd of terrified by-standers ranks low on the list of most dangerous getaways she's encountered in her years as an official and unofficial killer.

She just _seethes_ that she has to do it at all.

She checks her shoulder and sees the blonde in pursuit, several yards behind her; the crowd may be sprinting but Lexa and her pursuer move faster, lions among a stampede of herd animals, weaving and ducking at a breakneck pace. Lexa pours on speed, but she grits her teeth because _she's_ the predator here, _she_ had the perfect plan, she’s not the assassin that should be running. She grabs the collar of her jacket.

"Anya?"

 _"What's happening?"_ Anya replies instantly.

"Running. I have an unknown on me; do you have cameras up yet?"

 _"Not yet. Do_ not _engage."_

"So she's blind too. Hold off on the cameras then."

Anya knows that voice and a warning rises in her own. "Lexa? _Do not engage._ "

She's already made up her mind.

Lexa pulls a hard right into an alleyway and skids through a pile of trash as she tries to find her feet. With no crowd here, the blonde won't hesitate to shoot, but Lexa manages to duck into cover behind a dumpster before she blonde can chase her into the alley.

Blood pounding in her ears, Lexa gasps in a breath and holds it, releasing it over a five-count. After the roaring sounds of the fight, gunfire, and escape, all seems eerily silent except for the sound of her own body, which she fights to calm. Center herself again, like she's breathing in the aroma of the flower stall. Anya's voice continues to buzz in her ear, demanding Lexa run and respond instead of what Anya knows is going to happen, but Lexa ignores her: her attention focuses on the footsteps that clatter to a stop at the mouth of the alley.

Hiding places and cover fill the area: dumpsters to hide in or behind, cardboard boxes, junk thrown out by the businesses on the block that the alley bisects. Lexa has tucked herself into the alcove of a boarded up basement window, her back pressed against the brick, gun in hand, knees drawn to her chest. Should the blonde come poking tentatively around the corner, Lexa can spring up at her; should she simply run past, then Lexa has the advantage. The girl seems new, if the unpolished assassination attempt on Cage Wallace is anything to go by—now that Lexa has a second to breathe, she discovers that she’s oddly curious.

The footsteps grow closer. Light, even, slow. Maybe the girl isn’t as new. She’s checking every possible hiding space, moving methodically along. Faced suddenly with the prospect of killing this girl in close combat, Lexa tightens her grip on her gun and holds her breath, waiting.

"Got her?" comes a low voice, on the opposite side of the dumpster from where Lexa hides. A pause. “Excellent.”

Her finger rubs the trigger of the gun. Two shots, that’s all. And then—

_Bang._

The explosion deafens her. The bright flash of light and the ringing in her ears are the last things she remembers.

 

*

 

She has never been captured.

She’s been beaten, chased, shot, drugged, locked in a trunk for sixteen hours to get through enemy territory, but never _captured._ In her line of work, the people who get captured cease to be people. Lexa likes being alive. And now, that’s in jeopardy.

Even in the groggy first seconds of regaining consciousness, she knows innately how slim her chances are. She’s lashed to a wooden chair, wrists and ankles bound, stripped to her tank top and jeans and socks, with a gag in her mouth—that’s a big clue. But more damning is the non-descript room she wakes up in. A cheap motel suite, plastic sheeting covering the floor beneath her chair, curtains drawn. The coffee table in front of her displays a spread of weapons, including Lexa’s handgun, her two knives, and the syringe meant for Cage Wallace. Added to her weapons is another knife, as well as a ridiculous, gaudy, ivory-and-chrome-plated handgun. It’s clearly meant as a threat from the blonde girl who captured her, who sits on the couch on the opposite side of the of the coffee table, reclined against the arm rest and looking distinctly unimpressed with the time it’s taken Lexa to regain consciousness. But when Lexa locks freshly-awakened eyes with her, she sees a sparkle of amusement in the blonde’s face. There’s a purple bruise forming on the girl’s jaw from where Lexa had landed her punch, but it gives Lexa no satisfaction—she’s still the one tied up.

Her fists itch. Her body rages at her to fight.

With all of the considerable force in her body, she pulls at the ropes as she rocks the chair forward, only to be rewarded with less than an inch of motion, notable but nothing she could use to escape—in fact, the knots are probably designed that way, to give her a false confidence and keep her struggling until she's exhausted. And malleable. Easier to break. Worse still, no ripple of concern crosses the blonde's placid face or darkens her smile. She knows Lexa won't be going anywhere soon. Seething, Lexa relaxes instantly and pours her energy into hardening her willpower. She won't give this woman the satisfaction of watching her struggle against her bonds. As best she can around the gag in her mouth, Lexa smooths her face to match the blonde's nonchalance and she stares back evenly, ready to wait as long as it takes.

"Comfortable?" is the first word out of the woman's mouth.

Lexa rolls her eyes. As if their business really needs more arrogant 007 wannabes.

Surprisingly, the blonde flushes pink, from her cheeks to her chest. Adopting a much colder and forceful tone, she says, "The reason you're still alive is because I want to talk to you. One on one. If I remove the gag, will you talk?"

Lexa stares back evenly, making no promises.

Watching her all the way, the blonde crosses the room and pulls the gag out of Lexa’s mouth. She’s hesitant, Lexa notes, jerky in her movements the closer she gets. It’s good; it means she’s nervous beneath that façade. Maybe she hasn’t tied a knot correctly. Maybe she doesn’t trust the chair. She’s definitely new at this.

She doesn’t say a word once the gag is removed, but as the blonde walks back to the couch, Lexa scans the exits. A normal motel door. One window. There’s another doorway opening to a bedroom beyond, and through it, Lexa can spot the corner of another window. That’s three possible exits. If, of course, she can escape these ties. She works at them silently behind her back as the blonde resumes her seat and her air of nonchalance.

“So,” she says. “What’s your name?”

They wait, staring at one another.

“I’m Clarke,” she offers.

 _Probably not._ But if her nerves had been a good sign, the fact that she gives Lexa any name is a bad one. If she’s giving away information, it means Lexa won’t get out of here to have a chance to use it. And even if she did, it’s not as if she would ever be able to find her based on a single name, even if it was real.  It seems all Clarke is willing to give her, though; she lapses into patient, amused silence, comfortable with the upper hand.

Instead of offering an equal piece of information, Lexa tries to shake that upper hand confidence. “Who’s listening?” she asks, as close to polite as the situation will allow.

“What?”

“You’re not in charge,” Lexa states. “I heard you following orders from an earpiece, before you dropped on me. So…who’s listening to us right now? Who’s telling you what to do?”

Clarke narrows her eyes and sits forward, her upper lip curling up in the slightest of snarls. “I’m in charge,” she says.

Lexa’s been around enough to hear the threat in the words. But she smirks anyway, to show Clarke she knows she got to her. Casting an exaggerated glance around the room for microphones or anything of the sort, she says simply, “Sure you are.”

“I am,” Clarke presses. “And I want to know who you work for. What were you doing at the farmer’s market?”

Silence.

“Were you there for Cage Wallace?”

Silence.

“Protecting, or trying to kill him?”

Smug, unbreakable, silence.

Masking her irritation with an equal haughtiness, Clarke picks up the silver gun from the coffee table, then thinks better of it and trades it for Lexa’s knife. Lexa’s favorite knife. A gift she never leaves home without. For the first time since waking up, Lexa’s eyes leave Clarke’s face, fixing instead on the way she twirls the knife in her fingers. She can handle it, definitely; she’s not as skilled as Lexa, though, and Lexa itches to show her the proper way to use it. Clarke notices her stare and jumps at the opportunity.

“Knives are quieter than guns,” she explains, lacing a threat into the words.

“More controllable, too,” Lexa agrees. “You don’t have a great shot.”

“And yet you’re the one tied up and I’m the one sitting here.”

“Not an accomplishment when you shot to kill.”

“Did I?”

“When I get out of here, you better wish you had.”

Clarke bares her teeth, leaning forward with a new display of anger. “You—”

The sharp trill of a satellite phone from somewhere behind Lexa cuts her off and Clarke jumps to her feet.

“The boss is calling,” Lexa intones.

Clarke looks very much like she would love to smack Lexa’s arrogance off of her face, but the phone continues to ring and she can’t take the time. She hurries across the room, out of Lexa’s field of vision, and takes the phone into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

The moment the door clicks shut, Lexa begins to fight the bonds with all of her strength, twisting and stretching and kicking against them to try to break free. She swears she feels them give—but each time she builds a little bit of hope, it’s dashed by the next tug when the ropes stay as sturdy as ever. For all of this girl’s bravado, Lexa can sense a weakness in her and if she can just get one arm free of the rope, enough to reach the tantalizing display of weapons before her, Clarke doesn’t stand a chance. One arm free, and Lexa can be ten miles away in less than ten minutes.

But no matter how hard she struggles, the ropes have no give beyond that inch she discovered when she first awoke. Lexa switches tactics: she flings her body sideways, trying to tip the chair. On her first try, two legs lift off the floor and come back down with a bang. A muffled “ _fuck!”_ comes from the bedroom and she knows she has only seconds. Desperate, she throws her body sideways again and this time, the chair turns over, sending Lexa tumbling to the floor with a bone-jarring crash. Wincing with the pain, she kicks her feet, trying to slide the knots of the ropes down past the bottom of the legs of the chair.

_“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”_

Lexa manages to get one leg free as Clarke comes rushing out of the bedroom; she delivers a blistering kick to the muscle just Clarke’s knee, earning a satisfying yelp of pain. The blonde girl goes staggering back. But she recovers before Lexa can get her hands or her other leg free and dives onto Lexa, dodging a second kick. With Lexa pinned down, Clarke catches her free leg. Lexa bucks and writhes, but Clarke sits on her with her knee in her chest as she ties Lexa’s leg to the chair again, taking great care this time.

Once Lexa is secure, Clarke stands Lexa and the chair upright and steps back to examine her work. Both girls are breathing hard, red-faced from the scuffle, Lexa glaring with all the hate in the world. Clarke tips her head onto her shoulder in a moment of consideration and then reaches forward, brushing Lexa’s hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear.

“There,” she says lightly, satisfied. “Better.”

Lexa fixes her with a thermonuclear scowl and swears on everything holy that she will get her back for that cocky display of tenderness, someday.

Nevertheless, her hope is fading. Her leg is bound tighter than before, and it only makes sense that if the first escape attempt was not successful, the others will be even more impossible. When Clarke limps back to the couch and takes a seat, the glare on her face is clouded and more serious than before. Whether that’s a product of the phone call in the bedroom or Lexa’s escape attempt, or simply the passage of time, Lexa can’t be sure, but either way, it’s not a good sign.  In situations like this, captives don’t live very long once the captor grows tired of toying with them.

Lexa would know—she’s been in Clarke’s position before.

“Look.” Clarke sits forward. “I told you, I don’t want to kill you. I want answers. Information.” She grabs the syringe from the coffee table and examines it closely. “I want to know what this is. What would happen if I injected it into you.”

Lexa considers it and decides to play along. “If you injected it into a normal person, they’d die. If you tried all of it on me, I’d be comatose for about 36 hours, my heart beating so slowly I’d appear dead. Unresponsive. Which, if you truly want answers and don’t want to kill me…would be inconvenient for both of us.”

For a second Clarke doesn’t seem to believe her, before it clicks: Lexa wouldn’t be carrying around a poison and running the risk of accidental injection if she hadn’t already taken an antidote. She sets the syringe back down, eyeing it warily. And, not for the first time, Lexa gets the distinct feeling that she’s dealing with a rookie. Or at least, someone not used to the ruthlessness required for her current position; she has the shooting and fighting down quite well. Maybe Lexa can still get out of this. She tugs at the ropes again, subtly this time, so that Clarke can’t see. She just needs time.

“What’s your name?” Clarke asks her.

Silence.

“Just give me something to call you. I gave you mine.”

Fair. “Lexa.”

“Real name?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. What were you doing in the market?”

“Same as you.” It goes against everything she knows to reveal anything about her jobs, goals, or life, but she figures that if she can survive this, Clarke won’t, and anything she tells her now will die with her soon. Her back is against the wall.

“So you were trying to kill Cage Wallace,” Clarke says, intrigued. “For personal, or professional reasons?”

Lexa raises a brow, somewhat offended at the implication. “What about myself or my current situation at all implies that I’m here because of some emotional entanglement that made it necessary for me to seek some sort of revenge against Cage Wallace?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Clarke says coolly, sitting back on the couch, hard edge ebbing away now that she’s finally getting answers. “It’s not about you; it’s about the fact that he’s pissed off people all over the world and I’d venture to say with that track record, he has a lot of people who want him dead for personal reasons. So you’re just in it for money?”

Lexa doesn’t answer that. It’s close enough to the truth, although she’s never truly cared about the money. This is all she’s ever known; it’s what she’s good at; and her faultless reputation has never been questioned. She is given a job, she does the job, no questions asked, and she’s proud of that perfect record. No political agendas, no personal entanglements, no vendettas, just contracts and cash. This is who she is. And she will not let some chaotic blonde Bond girl get in the way of that.

Behind her back, she tugs at the knots again.

“Listen, Lexa,” Clarke says, picking up Lexa’s gun from the table again and examining it, this time with less of a threat in her voice and more of a hollow apology. “I need to kill Cage Wallace. I don’t want to kill you, but I’m not going to let you take this target from me. Cage is in the United States for another week; I’m keeping you until he’s dead, and then I’ll decide what to do with you. Got it?”

“Just kill me and get it over with, then,” Lexa says, lolling her head back to the ceiling with a massive roll of her eyes.

“I don’t want to!” Clarke nearly shouts, and Lexa’s head snaps forward, because that wasn’t anger—for the first time, she heard the wavering of real emotion in Clarke’s voice. “I will if I have to, don’t get me wrong—don’t test me. But I don’t kill unless I have to, and right now, Cage Wallace is the only one I have to kill. Believe me. I have to kill him.”

There’s a desperation to her words, a quiet plea that Lexa can’t quite work out. For all her bluster about Lexa having personal reasons, it certainly sounds like Clarke is in this for more than the money. Lexa studies her curiously, feeling a twinge of sympathy for whatever situation Clarke might be in to make her falter like that, and the two killers hold each other’s gazes for a long moment; Clarke rebuilds her icy demeanor right before Lexa’s eyes, and the connection is lost.

“So you’re staying,” she declares, jumping to her feet. “Get comfortable. The ropes okay?”

Lexa can do icy demeanors too. She stares without response as Clarke crosses the room and leans over her, reaching around to check the knots behind Lexa’s back and then down at her feet. It brings her into an immensely vulnerable position, so much so that Lexa thinks it’s almost intentional—Clarke stretches across her languidly, casually, apparently unconcerned that Lexa could lash out and incapacitate Clarke with her head or teeth. But Lexa doesn’t. Something about the closeness of the girl in her lap—her body heat, the flowery scent of her hair, the fact that the angle Clarke stands at reveals the depth of her cleavage beneath the neckline of her t-shirt—renders Lexa incapable of doing anything but breathing. And even that is in question, as she struggles to keep it even. When Clarke steps back, giving Lexa a satisfied smirk, for a half-second Lexa envisions them in a different world, where they’re not killers, and Clarke has her bound to the chair in a very different kind of game.

The idea is so repelling that Lexa snarls and chokes out, “Fuck you,” in response to Clarke’s smirk. For fair measure, she throws her weight against the ropes again in an attempt to intimidate Clarke. If it worked, the blonde gives away nothing. She takes Lexa’s threat with a nonchalant shrug and limps into the bedroom without a word.

Lexa could make her life hell; the girl isn’t prepared to put up with a prisoner who viciously refuses to conform—again, Lexa knows firsthand what kind of nightmare that can be. She could shout and yell for help and threaten all manner of mayhem and mutilation if Clarke does not let her go.

But she doesn’t.

Because the last time she threw her weight against the ropes and pulled, she felt one small knot begin to loosen.

 

*

 

Clarke isn’t sure what wakes her.

The bedroom is still dark, unchanged. She fell asleep watching infomercials on mute so that she could hear any sound from the main room beyond, and her room glows with the blue light of a three a.m. TV. Her sat phone sits silent on the nightstand. Nothing has broken the pristine stillness of the night. Despite everything, Clarke sleeps quite well, and she never wakes up in the middle of the night like this--she has half a mind to roll over and go right back to sleep, writing it off as a fluke.

But the cold sense of unease trickling down the back of her neck stops her.

She slips out of bed and glides across the bedroom without making a sound. The bedroom door is cracked open.

Ice slips into her stomach. She knows she shut and locked that door before falling asleep.

Her heart pounding, Clarke quickly presses herself to the wall beside the door and freezes there, not even breathing in case Lexa is listening on the other side. Clarke strains to hear anything at all from the main room, but she can only pick up the faint mechanical hum of the TV. The window won’t work as an exit. If Lexa bursts through those doors, weapons in hand, Clarke dies. That’s all there is to it. She captured the girl with Raven’s help on the cameras but she knows Lexa is the first one to match her, maybe even beat her; she doesn’t want to take that risk.

She pulls in a shallow breath, and exhales. Nothing.

Her father’s watch around her wrist suddenly feels cold and she registers its presence--the idea flashes to her just as quickly. She unwinds the band and tosses it to the far side of the room, where it clatters across the wooden floor.

She waits for the door to bang open and the fight to begin.

Still nothing.

Impatience overpowers her caution at last and Clarke throws open the door, diving through it with fists at the ready.

“ _Sonuvabit_ \--”

The ropes lay in a tangled pile on the floor. The chair is empty. Lexa is gone. Fury blinding her, Clarke rushes across the room and flings the empty chair aside with a frustrated snarl, then throws herself to the window to look for any sign of a figure escaping through the motel parking lot below, but the circle of yellow light from the single flickering streetlight reveals nothing. She’s gone.

Seething, Clarke turns away from the window and fights to control her anger, lest she make some massively stupid mistake like charging out into the darkness to chase the girl down. That’s when she notices the worst of it: the coffee table, where she had _stupidly_ left the weapons as a threat to Lexa, has been cleared off, including her knife and her prized handgun, a gift she’s carried with her for years. Lexa took them all. That cuts deep, stinging Clarke in the pit of her stomach. She’s not only been beaten, but humiliated, and stolen from.

“God _damn_ it,” she hisses, storming back into her bedroom while her imagination dances with revenge fantasies, all the things she’ll do with those stolen knives and her gun when she gets it back. She’s going to hunt this girl down, whatever it takes.

With the satellite phone in hand, she stalks back and forth across the room, forgetting about the pain in her bruised thigh as she tries to get her thoughts in order. “Octavia?” she barks as soon as she hears the girl pick up. “Round up everyone, I need all our resources. I--”

Clarke’s voice dies in her throat when her eyes absently scan the bed and a flash of reflected light catches her eye. The made-up half of the bed she hadn’t slept on is still perfectly pristine, except for a slight dip in the feather pillow, where her knife lays displayed like a gift, the sharpened point aimed at where Clarke’s head had been as she slept. Lexa hadn’t just escaped; she’d sneaked into Clarke’s bedroom with a knife, stood over the bed...and then left it on the other pillow beside her.

There doesn’t need to be a note for the knife to communicate one very clear idea: _stay out of my way_. Lexa could have killed her, effortlessly, but she didn’t--it’s a show of power and a dark threat, the suggestion that Lexa decides whether she lives or dies and if Clarke comes after her again, she won’t be as benevolent.

“Octavia,” she says into the phone, staring at the knife in disbelief, “be at the office in an hour.”

_*_

 

_“I want to know who that bitch is.”_

“Clarke, slow down,” Octavia groans, following her into the conference room.

“No!” She slams her palm on the table. “We find her, _now._ ”

The force of her anger surprises the assembled group. Usually Clarke is the cool, level-headed leader, getting them out of situations like this, not sending them into wild-goose chases for female assassins who wriggled out of her grasp after an ill-advised kidnapping. Bellamy leans back in his chair with his boots up on the table, but he exchanges a concerned glance with Octavia; Raven halts her typing at her bank of computers against one wall and looks over her shoulder; Monroe stares over the rim of her glass; and Octavia edges around Clarke to stand in front of her and get her attention.

“We’re working on it, Clarke,” Octavia says. “But we don’t have much to go on.”

Raven goes back to her computers and her typing speed picks up. “You said the name she gave you was Lexa, right? That turns up…around 20 million results, if you factor in alternate forms like Alex, Alexandra, Alexandria...If it’s even real. Do you have anything else? She was American?”

Clarke shrugs. “I didn’t hear any hint of an accent. Nothing regional. Well-spoken, well-trained. She was contracted to Cage Wallace and was adamant she had no personal connection. No tattoos or scars, brown hair, green eyes.” she starts to drift, then grits her teeth and releases an angry sigh. “God damn it, she took my gun.” She’s said the words a half dozen times today, as if she still can’t believe it.

“You probably shouldn’t have left it out—”

“Shut up, Octavia.”

Raising her hands in surrender, Octavia falls into a seat at the conference table. At the same moment, Harper gets to her feet, shaking her head. “You have my full support in this, Clarke. When we find her, I’ll help you go after her. But until then, I’m not sitting here chasing ghosts. We have an architecture firm to keep up—so some of us have work to do.”

Clarke stares her down as Harper haughtily strides out of the conference room, but she can’t reprove her, because Harper is right. On top of the architecture firm they use as a front, Cage Wallace is still out there, and Jaha won’t be pleased that Clarke didn’t take him out at the farmer’s market as planned. Octavia just got back from a trip to Serbia. Monroe is still injured from a truck crash in Northern Canada. Raven is preternatural at the computer desk and her fingers fly over the keyboards as she tries different tactics in the search for Lexa, but she also has camera systems to hack, government files to read, targets to locate, and tracks to cover. Tasking her team with hunting down Lexa is asking a lot.

But still. The threat, the gun, the fact that Lexa is chasing a target Clarke desperately needs to kill…

“Keep looking,” Clarke tells them firmly. “Cage Wallace is our first priority. But I want this girl’s head. We cannot let her take this target.”

“You probably should have killed her when you had the—”

“Shut _up,_ Octavia!”

Octavia and Monroe exchange knowing glances, which Clarke ignores. They know that when she gets set on something, there’s no deterring her.

“You said she was well-trained, right?” Raven asks over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Contract work. Based on the way she handled it…she’s been around a while. Why?”

“Because when I killed the camera systems at the farmer’s market, someone fought me on it, even while you were chasing Lexa through the streets.” Raven chews the inside of her cheek, head tipped onto her shoulder as she puts the pieces together. “She had back-up, and high-level back-up. Which means you’re right: we’re dealing with someone legit here. Probably multi-national, million-dollar contracts. Secret military team type shit. Are you sure you want to take this on, Clarke?”

Every word carries the weight of her intention: “We are taking her down.”

“Got it, captain.”

 

*

 

“Find her.”

“Lexa.”

“Anya, _find her._ ”

Anya, treating a scrape on Lexa’s shoulder from when Clarke tackled her to the ground, steps back from Lexa’s body and gives her a dubious look. When Lexa doesn’t falter in her stone-faced determination, matching Anya’s glare with a learned intensity, Anya gives a casual shrug and spills extra hydrogen peroxide onto Lexa’s wound. She smirks at Lexa’s hot hiss of pain.

“We’re not wasting our resources tracking down some hack job wannabe hit woman,” Anya tells her, dabbing at the scrape. “We have a job to do. Don’t lose focus.”

Lexa fumes silently but allows Anya to finish patching her up. All around them, million-dollar tech hums quietly, waiting to be used to find one girl in the city of ten million, a city that sprawls out thirty floors below their top floor suite. She can do it. She can find Clarke. She’s not sure what compels her, what makes it so necessary and so irresistible, but it is. The fact that Clarke captured her is reason enough, Lexa decides. Her pride has been bruised and she needs revenge; on top of that, Clarke is gunning for the same target she is. Lexa berates herself for not killing her once she finally broke free of the ropes binding her to the chair. She’d scooped up every weapon, wiped her prints, cleaned everything without making a single sound, but when she had padded into Clarke’s bedroom to leave her knife in her chest…she couldn’t do it. Emotion took over, in that moment. But now, she grimaces against the thought that she could have been that weak, and she’s desperate to rectify that mistake.

“What if she takes out Cage Wallace first?” Lexa points out. Anya ignores her, striding back across the office with Lexa at her heels. “Our contractors see someone—who I guarantee you is cheaper—doing our job better than we can. Do you think they’re going to come to us for the next contract? Word gets out, we’re done. We have to take her out…

Her voice trails off as they enter their main operations room, ultra-modern white glowing faintly with the blue-green reflections of their bank of computers against one wall. Opposite the computers is the sight that attracts Lexa: a glass display case of every type of gun imaginable, black and silver metals backlit by sterile white light. From fully assembled sniper rifles as long as Lexa is tall, to miniature handguns that can be holstered in boots and on her thigh under a dress, it’s a wall of pure possibility, a million ways to kill, and while she has her preferences, she can use every single goddamn one.

Lexa stares up at them, imagining all of the different scenarios—Clarke is the enemy in every thought exercise. And it’s so, so satisfying.

“Lexa!”

And then it’s not.

Anya places herself between Lexa and the display case, getting close to her and snarling every word: “Focus! Cage. Wallace. Is. The. Target. You have one more chance, one more public appearance in the States, and then he’s out of our grasp. Got it? We have one chance. One chance. We kill our targets and we kill those who get in the way of trying to kill our targets; we don’t go off on half-cocked missions hunting for trouble and attracting attention to ourselves. If this girl gets in your way again, kill her. But until then, get your emotions in check. You should well know what happens when you don’t.”

Lexa swallows hard and raises her chin. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever forget trying to staunch the blood from Anya’s wounds when that mission had gone bad.

“Understood.”

“Kill your thoughts about this. It’s all just a job. I cannot have you going off book again.”

She gives Anya a solitary nod. She’s right. Reaching into her pocket, Lexa withdraws the flamboyant ivory-and-chrome handgun she took from Clarke and hands it over, with a promise in her eyes that by giving it to Anya, she’s giving the chase up.

Anya doesn’t look entirely convinced, but Lexa doesn’t push it: ever since that mission in Sweden, where Anya had been injured in an explosion, her stint on permanent headquarter duty had hardened her, wound her tighter and made her much stricter than the girl Lexa grew up with. Whether it was the injury or the permanent grounding, Lexa doesn’t know. In their old days in the field, Anya was always more wild, more prone to improvisation and instinct, while Lexa kept them grounded and tight with the plan, varying only when their lives were in danger. Instincts scream at her to go after Clarke right now, but she buries them: she has a contract to fulfill, and she can’t let Anya down. Or herself. Or the client.

“Get me info about Cage Wallace’s next appearance,” Lexa commands, voice perfectly even. “Satellite imagery, building maps for the entire block, biographies on everyone he’ll be meeting, everything. Let’s get a board up.”

That finally satisfies partner and mentor. “That’s better. Let’s get to work.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and I'm sorry it's been so long between chapters! In case you don't follow me on tumblr, I posted a playlist for this fic, if anyone is interested. The tumblr url is the same as my username on here: @centuriesofexistence.
> 
> Again, thanks for all the supprt! xx

Late spring fog has flooded the city, stretching long ghostly fingers between the skyscrapers and releasing a bitter cold into the air, winter’s last gasp. The weather has its benefits, to be sure—the gray haze hides Clarke from anyone on the street below who might look up to the rooftop—but the air is icy so high up, and each time the breeze blows over her, it races down her spine, making her shiver and duck her chin into the collar of her jacket.

Worse still is the way her numb, red fingers fumble at the scope of her rifle, trying to focus it properly so that she can scan the wall of windows on the 17th floor of the Plaza Hotel across the street. Cage Wallace will be staying in one of three rooms on that floor following his annual corporate dinner, which will take place in the hotel ballroom tomorrow night. Clarke won’t find out which room it will be until she returns to the rooftop tomorrow night, but she needs to check her angles and take her measurements now, to ensure a quick and easy kill when the time comes.

This would be a hell of a lot easier if it wasn’t so cold.

At least it’s silent up on the rooftop, with the fog muffling the sound of the city below, emphasizing her isolation so high above the rest of the world. The only accompaniment to her steady breathing is the whipping and whistling of the wind through the skyscrapers; even the traffic on the streets sounds miles away. In her line of work, in her everyday life, Clarke very rarely gets these moments of absolute zen, of pristine serenity. She lets it seep into her skin, calming her; she lets the cool oxygen flow into her lungs and clear her head. For the moment, she forgets about the rifle in her hands and just _exists_ , losing herself in the sky.

So when she hears the sharp _click_ of a gun cocked just behind her head, it sounds more like a gunshot.

“Don’t reach for your gun. Don’t move your hands at all. Stay perfectly still.”

That voice is even more distinctive than the sound of the gun.

_Lexa._

In that moment, Clarke knows three things.

_One._ Modern handguns are designed to make manual cocking of the hammer unnecessary. Lexa’s decision to de-cock the gun and then cock it again is a clear intimidation tactic, pulled straight from the movies.

_Two._ Lexa got the drop on her, because that girl is a better killer.

_Three._ She’s not dead yet. This may be the most important of the three. That she’s not dead yet means Lexa either wants to gloat before she kills her...or Clarke has a chance of talking her way out of this.

“Wait,” she says, because it’s all she can say as her mind rockets through her options.

As instructed, Clarke stays perfectly still. Her heart pounds white-hot adrenaline through her veins—as cool as she may be, she’ll never grow accustomed to a gun to her head—but she forces herself to ignore instinct and instead relax every muscle in her body. She inhales a slow breath and closes her eyes.

She has a gun too. The holster at her side weighs heavy on her hip, but she doesn’t dare think about it. The temptation could lead to a sudden movement, an excuse for Lexa to pull the trigger. She can’t allow that. Just patience. She’ll wait for her opening.

Lexa’s words come low and dangerous. “Was my message not clear enough in the motel?” she asks. “Cage Wallace is mine.”

“I have orders to kill him,” Clarke replies, her voice even, monotone. “I cannot disobey those orders. So I’m going to kill him.”

The muzzle of the gun presses against the base of her skull.

“I am not fond of repeating myself for clarity, Clarke. I will not hesitate to kill you.”

And yet...she has hesitated. So far.

Sensing the opportunity to prolong her existence, Clarke pivots and asks Lexa, “So how did you find me?”

A pause. “After seeing that your initial plan to kill Wallace seemed to be nothing more than throwing an explosive at his SUV, it was not hard to imagine that your next plan would to be sniping from the rooftop opposite the hotel.”

For all her efforts to keep her body relaxed, Clarke blisters at the smugness in Lexa’s voice. Her self-control thins.

“Well, it’s flattering to hear that you’ve decided hunting me down is more important than your target,” she mumbles.

“You’re not,” Lexa says coolly. “It’s just good to stay in practice.”

“So, are you going to kill me?”

And there’s the muzzle against the back of her head again, a gentle brush of metal in her hair, and whether it’s an answer or just another threat, it makes the decision for her. She opens her eyes and scans the skyline, but her mind is on the rooftop behind her. She pictures the angles in her mind—where Lexa’s standing, the open space on either side, the air conditioning vents, the pipes, the grates, the cover...

Then Lexa speaks. “Possibly. Howev--”

Clarke drops to the floor and flings a kick backward, connecting a heavy combat boot to an unprotected shin and Lexa’s threat becomes a shout of pain. Everything narrows to the next move, the next strike. Clarke surges up, swings at the gun, throws her weight into Lexa’s chest—the gun clatters to the concrete rooftop and Lexa stumbles a step back. In that half-second of space, Clarke reaches for her own gun, but before she can raise it, long fingers wrap around her wrist in a superhuman grip that wrenches her gun from her hand with such force that it too goes skittering away across the roof. Lexa lands a knee in Clarke’s stomach, then steps back with a grimace of pain as Clarke doubles over, gasping for air.

It’s one tiny, frozen moment, when Clarke looks up at her and they lock blistering glares, weapons too far to dive for--it’s just them, and their pride, and their burning new enmity.

They launch themselves at each other like lions.

Clarke, with her back to the edge of the building and a 500 feet of open air behind her, fights like a cornered animal, ignoring defense and pressing forward with every punch she throws, whether they land or not; and most of them don’t, as Lexa plays all defense, dropping back out of range, ducking, or even absorbing every one of Clarke’s swings. She doesn’t bother to counter as she as she backs away from the ledge of the roof and Clarke comes after her.

And god damn, even in tight jeans and a motorcycle jacket, Lexa moves like poetry, smooth and preternaturally fluid in her evasion. She dips and swings away from each strike, until the rare moment when Clarke drops her guard and Lexa takes advantage, lashing out with precise counterstrikes of her own. Once to Clarke’s stomach, twice to the shoulder, once a glancing blow off of her bicep, and she’s back to absorbing whatever Clarke throws her way. Back and forth.

Then, too late, Clarke starts to feel fatigue burning in her muscles and she realizes the game. The alarm bells ring in her head and she hears the screaming of her old drill instructor, ripping in to her for having no strategy to her attack—and for not realizing Lexa’s plan of allowing her to exhaust herself. Lexa has conserved her energy, while Clarke’s arms fill with lead. She searches the roof for an escape, for an advantage, and her mind goes back to the two guns laying on the roof, several yards behind them...but instead, her focus ends up on Lexa, whose lips part in a brutal grin as Clarke throws a slow punch and Lexa side-steps it easily.

Lexa is winning, and she knows it.

The desperation and fear of the moment should make her faster, more frenzied, but the fight slows down, with Clarke pulling in deep breaths and dropping into a deeper defensive position between every exchange. That’s when Lexa starts to push back: Clarke isn’t fast enough to block a wicked strike to her shoulder, and when Lexa feints left, Clarke dodges right, only to meet a flattened palm to her chest that knocks the wind out of her.

As she whirls back with the momentum, she catches, out of the corner of her eye, her only chance: a pipe sticking up out of the roof. As Lexa advances, Clarke focuses all of her energy on her footwork, shuffling back, waiting for that perfect moment when Lexa will step in front of the pipe. The moment she does, Clarke makes one last ditch attempt and lunges forward.

Lexa steps back, hits the pipe, and stumbles.

It’s a half-second—Clarke can already see the impossibly athletic girl start to recover her balance—but that half-second is just the opening she needs. She turns so hard that her feet slip, but she scrambles back, hands hitting the ground as she tries to stay upright, but somehow she makes it to the gun she had dropped in the beginning of the fight. Her fingers close around the stock in an uncertain grip and she spins to take aim—

Lexa is already there, within inches of her. She catches Clarke’s arm before the blonde can swing it all the way around and the gun ends up pointing uselessly at the sky over Lexa’s shoulder. Instinct screams at her to lash out with her other hand, attack and push Lexa back and fire six shots—but a flash of silver between their bodies stops her.

Lexa holds a second gun, drawn from within her jacket. Looking down with wide eyes, Clarke recognizes it as her own, the one that Lexa stole from her.

Leveled right at her chest with a hand that shows no signs of shaking the way that Clarke currently is.

That, more than anything, is the confirmation of defeat.

Numbness shoots through her at the realization. Clarke’s fingers go limp and the gun, still pointing over Lexa’s shoulder, tumbles from her hands. Clarke staggers back, face blank—Lexa hasn’t pulled the trigger, but she might as well have. Now it’s just a matter of time. Clarke fixes her attention on the weapon, the white and chrome piece she knows so well. She’s carried it at her side for years. It was the first gun she ever fired. Irony is fucking stupid.

Of all the possible ways to die in this line of work—where she sleeps with a gun beneath her pillow, sneaks into hostile countries, and carries explosives in her back pocket—she never thought she’d face a quiet death on a rooftop at the hands of a gorgeous girl, just for getting in the way. But Lexa isn’t just any girl. Clarke can picture her hunting down her whole team after this, see her barging into their headquarters, guns blazing. Raven would put up a hell of a fight. Octavia might even stop her. But none of them would get out alive. Whatever Kane and Jaha would do if she refused to kill Cage—is it really worth her death and the deaths of her friends?

She can’t die here.

She tries to plead, despite every fiber of her being rebelling against supplication. But no words come out; her lips move soundlessly until she clamps them shut to swallow past the dry lump in her throat. Being on the wrong end of a gun and knowing it’s over makes even the bravest desperate. Resignation washes over her.

And still, Lexa holds the gun perfectly steady, motionless, scrutinizing Clarke as the fury of the fight drains slowly from her face, leaving it in a hard, unreadable scowl. Long strands of hair have come loose from her braid, falling to frame her face and swaying slightly in the rooftop breeze.

Clarke looks into her eyes and decides that there are worse sights to see at the end of her life. Emotions aside, at least she can appreciate what a damn good killer Lexa is, and how good she looks doing it. She raises her chin defiantly.

Lexa fires four shots.

All four explode into the sniper rifle set up beside Clarke, shredding it. Fragments of her rifle fly in every direction and Clarke can’t even move—she stands frozen in place, numb from head to toe with the shock, as Lexa surveys her destruction of the weapon. Then she lowers the gun, satisfied.

“Stay out of my way,” she snarls at Clarke. “That’s the only road that leads to you getting out of this alive.”

Everything is hazy. All Clarke remembers is the image of Lexa scooping the two guns that had been dropped in the fight, and then the sight of her back as she disappears through the roof access door. It takes several seconds before Clarke can move again—she looks to her rifle, which is now nothing more than twisted metal, useless.

Lexa’s a good shot.

But Clarke’s not dead. Either Lexa never came to the roof with the intention of killing her, or something stopped her in the end, but either way, Clarke is alive, and left with yet another message of Lexa’s lethality—and her unwillingness to kill.

Slowly, like ice melting, life begins to return to her. Clarke manages to wet her mouth again and turns to scan the hotel across the street, narrowing her eyes as she weighs her options. The corporate dinner is 36 hours from now, and her simple plan of a ranged kill from the roof is out now that Lexa knows about it.

And Lexa has now given her two chances—should she even try test her willingness to give her a third? The girl is a mystery. Against her will, Clarke’s thoughts turn from Cage Wallace to Lexa: where she must have trained, who she is, what she does, who she works for. Why she has such a cold detachment about killing and yet refuses to kill Clarke. Clarke brought Octavia and Raven and the others into this line of work, and beyond them, she’s never crossed paths with another contract killer. She wants to know _more._ But this is a huge city. She has no chance of finding Lexa on an average day—but she knows damn well where she’s going to be tomorrow night. She grits her teeth, decision made.

Was she ever really going to set aside her pride, set aside her curiosity, set aside her responsibility, and let Lexa take the kill that belongs to her?

Not a chance.

The girl is hers.

 

*

 

Just like the bustle of a neighborhood farmer’s market, the frenzy and fervor of a professional kitchen creates the perfect cover: all it takes to blend in here is a pressed white shirt, black pants, a waiter’s apron, and a certain obsequiousness when taking orders from the catering boss. When he stops her and asks where she came from, she mumbles something about “the agency sending her” and that’s good enough for him; she gets set to work immediately. She keeps her head down and does what she is told through the hot hours unloading the truck in the back alley, preparing the food in the kitchen, and setting up tables for the Wallace corporate dinner like a dutiful employee--the only time she sticks out is when she avoids joining the group when they gather to take a quick picture for Instagram.

Beyond that, if anyone had looked twice at her when she arrived and got to work, by the time the guests begin filling the ballroom outside, she’s nothing more than a part of the background, and that’s how she likes it.

The unfortunate aspect is that the uniform allows no room for her to carry a gun, not even in an ankle holster. Image is everything here, and she can’t afford a bulge on her ribcage or at the hem of her black slacks. Being weaponless tends to make her blood simmer in her veins, full of frustration and discomfort, so she’s concealed her slim knife inside an interior pocket of her apron. The knife is only a backup plan, a necessary comfort; it’s her guile that will be getting her out of any situation she gets into, not bloodshed. And besides: all she needs to kill Cage Wallace is contained in the small pink bag of ice, buried in the freezer beneath hundreds of other bags, where she had hidden it the moment she got into the kitchen.

“Lexa, how are you doing?” comes Anya’s voice over the earpiece. Another source of comfort.

“Fine, everything is in place,” Lexa murmurs. “Has he arrived?”

“Not yet. You know how rich guys are. Need to make an entrance.”

Lexa gets back to her duty of slicing carrots, but a stray thought penetrates her steely focus and she finds herself voicing it before she can stop herself: “What about the cameras? No issues like last time, right?”

“No, nothing,” Anya responds curtly. “I’m more prepared this time so it wouldn’t be an issue anyway, but I haven’t had anyone even try so far.”

“Good.”

“Why do you ask?”

Because she needs to know that Clarke isn’t here. That she heeded Lexa’s final warning. An odd sense of relief curls through her, but she knows she can never voice it to Anya. Her partner doesn’t even know about the rooftop altercation; they share everything, but for once, Lexa had kept something to herself.

She still doesn’t know why.

“Just running mental checks.”

She doesn’t know why she says that either. She just keeps slicing carrots, with a laser precision. She’s more comfortable with a knife in her hands than without one.

“Forget the mental checks,” Anya grumbles. “I’ll handle your cover. You handle the target.”

Anya leaves her to her work after that. There’s not a doubt in Lexa’s mind that she aroused Anya’s suspicions, but arguing about Lexa’s interest in the other killer serves no one right now, so her partner holds her tongue. Some part of her mind can’t shake the thought of Clarke—the girl has been stuck in her head since yesterday’s altercation—and even though she hasn’t shown up here tonight, the blonde lingers in her thoughts. In between the constant repetition of the steps of her plan tonight, Lexa finds herself wondering where Clarke is. Where she’ll be. If she’ll come for her.

Luckily, it’s not long until the dinner begins and action replaces her musings. Excused from her carrot duties, follows the rest of the catering team out of the kitchen, but while they all pick up platters of hors douerves, she heads straight for the bar to grab a tray of drinks—it’s another piece of her cover.

She knows she can’t afford to tarry long. She’s a master of making herself unassuming and invisible, but the longer she’s in the public eye, the more people will remember her ever asked to recall a mysterious caterer the night of Cage Wallace’s death. At the same time, she must establish herself as a normal piece of the scenery. So Lexa takes a lap to be seen, taking orders and handing out drinks to the more than 200 guests who have already arrived. Once her tray is empty, she refills it just once, repeats her course, and then disappears back into the kitchen to wait.

She’s dawdling at the carrot slicing station again when the all-important order comes over her earpiece.

“He’s here.”

A rush of adrenaline floods her veins. She takes a steadying breath and goes to the kitchen door, scanning the room through the small circular window.

There he is. Smooth, unfettered, entirely unaware he’ll be dead by midnight, Cage Wallace is easy to pick out in the middle of the ballroom simply by the way every face has turned in his direction upon his entrance. It’s his party, after all. He laughs, throwing his head back, and it’s as if there’s a spotlight on him. He has his arm around a beautiful red-headed woman--an escort, presumably, as Lexa knows from his file that he doesn’t have a significant other--and he’s surrounded by tuxedoed businessmen who are quite a bit shorter than his usual human shield wall of bodyguards.

The guards in question are instead posted around the walls of the room, and roaming amongst the crowd. Lexa counts around a dozen, as expected. No wonder he thinks he’s safe here. No wonder his guard is down. A situation like this is the only chance Lexa really has to kill him, barring a full scale assault with guns blazing and the certainty of innocents in the line of fire.

She’ll do it if needed, but she prefers the subtle.

So with that in mind, she gets to work. Knowing that no one will look twice at her now that she has designated herself one of the alcohol servers, she digs her small bag of ice from the industrial kitchen freezer and selects two large cubes for the glass before her. The rest of the ice in the bag, crushed and melting, she dumps into the sink and washes down the drain; she folds the plastic bag into her back pocket. One piece of evidence down. Once the job is done, she’ll take the glass, too, and then there won’t be a hint of evidence left behind.

Once she fills the glass and surrounds it with other identical drinks, she’s ready. The focus, then, is simply on making herself forgettable and handing him the correct drink. She’s already done the hard part of getting in.

Lexa keeps herself perfectly blank as she grabs the tray and swoops out into the main ballroom with it, taking a direct route and ignoring the handful of other guests who try to get her attention.

Her clock is ticking. She can’t wait.

Cage Wallace notices her as she approaches with her tray. His nod makes the whole group turn, and that is the moment of determination: forcing herself to be completely neutral, she keeps her eyes averted, as she would be expected as a service employee.

“Great, we’ve been dying for a drink,” she hears from somewhere above her. It’s not from Cage, but it’s enough to make her smirk to herself—if she were a lesser contract killer.

Straight-faced, she hands Cage his drink first. As she distributes the rest of the glasses, she keeps one eye on him: she watches with bated breath as he sniffs it, then, with a smile, passes it to his red-headed date.

To anyone else, it’s a gesture of chivalry, letting her taste it first, but Lexa knows that after the attempt at the market, he’s paranoid about another attack, even one as subtle attacks as a poisoned glass of alcohol. The girl is just a shield for any potential attempts on his life. Lexa watches as the girl graciously accepts the drink, raises it to her nose and inhales the scent, and then takes a sip.

There is a strange, electric pause.

“1908!” she declares.

Cheers go up when Lexa nods blankly. The whiskey is, in fact, Jack Daniel’s from 2010, but if they trust the red head’s taste, Lexa won’t bother to correct them. She just waits, quietly taking orders from the other men in the circle, with one eye on the glass as the red-head hands it back to Cage. Once he takes it and drinks, her job is done. She’ll be on her bike and heading home within four minutes.

Suddenly, the red-head jolts forward and half of the drink splashes out of her glass, splattering to the floor—for a terrifying instant it seems as if she tasted the poison, that the ice had melted too fast. Lexa braces to run, but then, Cage’s date turns with a scoff of disgust at the young woman who had just stumbled into her from behind and knocked the drink out of her hands.

The young blonde woman.

Lexa’s jaw drops. _Clarke._

The audacity. The boldness. The ridiculous, thick-skulled, obstinate, brazen arrogance for Clarke to show up here after Lexa spared her life for the second time, let her off with a warning, and fuck up Lexa’s assassination. And to show up in a dark blue ballgown, no less, with her skin glowing and her make-up done and her hair styled in long, flowing curls, like she’s some million-dollar shareholder in one of Cage’s businesses. How dare anyone call themselves a killer and show up looking like that, and still be ready to spill blood? Lexa’s own blood boils with a mixture of too many emotions to name—or even count. Fury, attraction, shock, adrenaline—she doesn’t know everything she feels but she feels it all at once, blotting out her sense and narrowing her field of vision to Clarke. The blonde is dizzy and bashful as she apologizes to Cage’s date and slinks away from the group.

It’s not until someone is handing her back the dripping whiskey glass that she realizes there are still people around her. It kills her that her target still stands just feet away, with the poison that was supposed to kill him now splashed on his leather shoes.

Lexa blinks and mumbles out a promise to get him a new one, even though those were her only two spiked ice cubes.

Worst of it all: as she stands there holding the half-empty glass, now useless...Clarke glances back over her shoulder, with a dark smirk.

Somehow, she knows exactly what she just did. Lexa snarls deep in her throat.

It’s war.

 

*

 

‘“The plan is fucked,” Lexa mutters to Anya.

_“What?!”_

“Hitwoman Barbie showed up again.”

“You’re kidding.”

Every ounce of indignation and disbelief in Anya’s voice, Lexa feels ten times over—if the noise wouldn’t alert the whole hotel, she would have kicked the bathroom stall door off its hinges in her frustration. She struggles to keep her emotions in check and her voice low as she recounts what happened.

“You were right,” Anya says when Lexa finishes. “We should have killed her when we had the chance, we should have tracked her down before tonight.”

“I’m aware,” Lexa groans. Now she can never tell Anya that she had tracked Clarke down—but that something had stopped her from pulling the trigger. Maybe it would be easier to confess if Lexa had a reason why she had let Clarke live, but without an excuse, it’ll remain a secret she takes to her grave.

Which may be soon, if she isn’t able to kill Cage secretly and has to resort to an all-out assault.

That’s where Anya’s mind has settled; she doesn’t waste time dwelling on people like Clarke. “Okay. We have no other options. Leave the girl, leave Cage, and get out. We’ll come up with another plan.”

“You want me to pull out so early?” Everything in her revolts against the idea of admitting defeat, even if there is no way to kill Cage tonight. She won’t let Clarke think she’s won. And she won’t let Clarke have this target, even if Lexa can’t.

“Do you have any other ideas?” Anya snaps.

_No._ “Yes.”

“And that is...?”

Lexa edges toward the bathroom door and cracks it open, looking out into the party.

“I’m getting rid of Clarke.”

“What? No—Lexa—do not—”

Anya’s voice cuts out abruptly when Lexa pulls the earpiece out of her ear and flushes it. She’ll catch hell for committing that cardinal sin, but she knows that if she doesn’t, Anya will shout into her ear for the rest of the night about how stupid Lexa’s plan is.

Lexa already knows; she doesn’t need Anya telling her.

Steeling herself, she heads back out into the party.

 

*

 

Hunter instincts: she finds Clarke almost immediately. The blue dress, the blonde hair, they stick out, somehow, in Lexa’s field of vision. Clarke sits at the bar, drinking alone, keeping her eyes on the wall of bottles and trying to avoid even the slightest bit of attention. But she can’t avoid Lexa. On a feather-light step, Lexa moves across the room and right to Clarke’s side.

Clarke looks at her sideways and jolts when she realizes who stands beside her, but when Lexa makes no move to attack, she relaxes, smoothing her face. They both stare forward.

“So...was there poison in the glass?” Clarke murmurs, low enough that no one around them will hear. “That was your assassination attempt?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lexa replies quietly, collecting empty glasses from the bar. “I’m just a caterer. On that note, can I get you a drink?”

It takes her a second to catch—Clarke gives her half a smile. “No, thank you. So, poison it is then. And after you claimed I was cliche for the sniper rifle on the roof. But why didn’t his girlfriend taste it?”

Lexa grits her teeth. “Pockets of liquid locked inside the ice cubes,” she mutters, with a tiny smirk when Clarke lets out a grunt of approval. “As he sipped it over the course of a half hour, the ice would have melted...”

“Releasing the toxin slowly,” Clarke realizes. “So it wouldn’t have been present in the first sip that his date took.” Her glass was halfway to her lips—she lowers it now, and pushes it away.

“Still think it’s cliche?”

“It’s not bad, I’ll admit.” She gives Lexa’s outfit a sideways glance. “It would have been better if it hadn’t come with the wait staff costume.”

“Says the Bond girl wannabe,” Lexa snaps.

Clarke turns more fully to her, eyes dark and dangerous, throwing caution to the wind. “We’ll see if you still think I’m just a Bond girl after I kill Cage. I have more cards in my deck than poisoned ice cubes.”

“Oh really?” Lexa breathes. She glides past Clarke under the guise of reaching for an empty glass on the other side of her; in the movement, her deft fingers draw one of the knives from her pocket. She presses the blade into the bare skin of Clarke’s back. The girl hisses at the cold steel, pulling in a deep breath. Lexa edges closer to Clarke to hide the knife from the sight of any onlookers—she breathes her threat onto Clarke’s neck.

_“I have more than poison too. Don’t cross me.”_

“You missed your chance on the rooftop,” Clarke replies, recovering herself. “You can’t kill me here. I’m a guest, I’m in a thousand-dollar dress—you won’t get more than a block away before they take you down.”

Lexa’s damn sure that she could—but it’s not a theory she wants to put to the test, at least not until Cage is put down. For now, the public eye will keep them civil. They’ll engage in this shadow war for the rest of the night, playing real-life chess, trying to out maneuver one another without dropping their cover.

She slips the knife back to her pocket and falls away from Clarke, her point sufficiently made. Hopefully, at least. The girl has a maddening habit of ignoring even the clearest of instructions, like stay alive.

 

*

 

True to form, Lexa still knows exactly what she’s doing--the difference now is that she has no idea why she’s doing it. She gets methodical. All night, she sweeps through the swinging doors of the kitchen, back and forth from the stainless steel bustle behind the scenes to the calm, elegant, black-tie affair with classical music playing in the background, and in neither location is she focused on anything other than Clarke and Cage Wallace, because figuring out Clarke’s plan to kill Cage is as important as establishing a secondary plan of her own.

But Clarke doesn’t seem to have a primary plan to kill him. The girl keeps to herself at a dinner table on the outskirts, staying seated as the rest of the guests glide from table to table, greeting and conversing, and she watches the party the way Lexa watches her. On the occasions that she does stand and draw closer to Cage Wallace, Lexa is right on her heels, ready to foil any attempt--but nothing ever happens. Clarke simply strides back to her table as if she merely wanted to stretch her legs. She makes no other moves, she doesn’t watch the time, she doesn’t communicate with anyone.

For a brief few moments, Lexa considers the possibility that Clarke is just toying with her. The two women are well aware of each other, locked in a strange sort of battle beneath their cover, exchanging glares and taunting smirks where they would otherwise be trading blows.

As the night wears long, the guests begin to disperse and the crowd thins, leaving drunk guests slouching in their chairs and groups of old friends catching up. Lexa’s instinct pulls toward the opportunity--it would be easy to ambush Cage in some empty hallway once he too leaves the room--but she dismisses the notion. Too high a risk, too many armed guards, no match for their firepower, no planned exit.

So for now, she’s going to have to let him go.

She hates admitting defeat.

There is one small benefit to it, however: Lexa acknowledging her loss makes her study of Clarke all the more interesting. The ticking clock toward the end of the night sounds loudly for both of them--but Clarke’s face is the one that shows it. She’s been sipping the same glass of wine all night, one she annoyingly poured herself, like a wary co-ed, so her eyes are sharp. But panicked. Lexa absently rearranges a dessert tray of cookies as she stares at Clarke, caught up in the worry creasing her face as her blue eyes sweep the room, darting everywhere, looking for a solution, finding nothing. Her red lips twist in frustration. There’s a small satisfaction in the sight, but it’s not enough to eclipse the breathtaking fascination she feels when she looks at Clarke: it’s like watching a movie play out, reading the girl’s face, weighing the pros and cons of each possibility right along with her, knowing what she’s thinking. Lexa forgets about the desserts in front of her--she’s entranced. Clarke is a smart one. Maybe not as adept at killing, or as ruthless, but sharp as the blade in Lexa’s pocket. A worthy opponent.

Stop. She shakes her head; it’s as if Anya is still in her ear, warning her. Respect is the first step toward humanizing; humanizing makes her job more difficult. And besides...Lexa will not drop her standards so low. Clarke is still the enemy.

The only thing that could interrupt her attention is Cage--he reenters her focus when he suddenly surges to his feet in the center of the room. Red-faced, swaying on the spot, he bids a booming goodnight to his assembled audience and lurches toward a doorway on the opposite side of the ballroom, helped along by two of his guards.

A sigh of frustration rumbles in Lexa’s chest. He’s begging for it. But too many variables to ensure a clean escape. A golden opportunity ripped--not slipped--from her fingers. Thanks to Clarke.

Clarke, whose eyes now glint with dangerous new intent as she watches Cage Wallace stumble across the room.

Something suddenly shifts.

Lexa stops reorganizing the plate and stares between her two targets, not daring to believe it.

Cage disappears through the doorway. There’s no way Clarke’s going to try it.

Clarke finishes her glass of wine and rises to her feet, tossing her blonde hair back over her shoulder. Her face, previously colored with desperation and worry, has turned stony. Set. Determined. Lexa’s breath catches in her throat and without warning, something cold and heavy slips into her stomach.

_“Don’t do it,”_ she breathes. _“You have no chance. Don’t do it.”_

Clarke sets off for the doorway with long, confident straight-backed strides. Lexa closes her eyes.

_“You idiot.”_

There are still half a dozen guards posted around the ballroom, with more in the hotel lobby. Two stand sentinel on either side of the doorway with their backs against the wall, looking ridiculously obvious with their matching suits and hands folded in front of them. But Clarke--stupid, brave, or both--pays them no mind, and instead walks faster, to the point of rushing toward the door. In high heels. She’s clearly not a girl accustomed to moving quickly in heels, because when she’s halfway to the door, she stumbles. It’s only a minor slip-up but Clarke’s hand immediately goes to her thigh before she continues on. Lexa has been trained well enough to know that that slight movement means only one thing: she has a gun strapped to her skin beneath her dress.

And Lexa isn’t the only one who noticed.

Clarke still doesn’t bother to look their way, but one of the guards narrows his eyes at her approach and tiny, tell-tale motion. He doesn’t stop her, but exchanges a glance with his partner as she ducks her head and disappears through the doorway after Cage. Something passes between the two of them.

_Let her be, let her be..._

The two men nod, gesture to a third, and follow Clarke through the doorway.

_Fuck._

Lexa is halfway across the ballroom before she even registers that she’s moving; all thoughts of her cover vanish as she sets off from the banquet table on long, purposeful strides. The crowd of half-drunk revelers between her and the doorway do little to dissuade her, and as she dodges businessmen and dives past couples who dance into her path, she just picks up more speed, grows more fervent. She can’t even bring herself to question /why/ she’s moving, as the pounding of her heart in her throat leaves no room for thought beyond the pure, omnipotent instinct that tells her to get to Clarke, tells her not to let it end this way. Her legs start to churn faster and faster beneath her the closer the doorway gets, until she’s almost at a full run when she passes through it, driven forward by something deep in the pit of her abdomen.

The long hallway beyond the ballroom is well-lit, but the mazy tile pattern and rows of columns and doors lining the walls, plus the floor to ceiling windows every few feet all serve to disorient her, making her realize she has no idea which way Clarke and the guards went. Grimacing, Lexa knows all she can do is keep moving until she finds them. As she goes, she takes mental stock of her situation: two knives, three guards, Clarke—

A gunshot rings out in the silence and Lexa drops into a full-tilt sprint.

She hears the fight before she sees it. The clattering and bang, the grunts and the shouts act like a beacon, drawing her in with their echoes in the hallway; she can hear high heels on the tile, bodies thrown into walls, sharp cries of pain and grunted threats.

“Back-up required in the west hallway, near the elevators!” comes a hoarse shout.

Lexa skids around a corner and the scene she throws herself into is just as brutal as it sounds. Cage must have escaped onto the elevator; one guard lies face down, red spreading across the white tile; another guard is doubled over in pain and leaning up against the steel doors of the elevator. A gun lays on the floor and in the center of the hallway, two men are attacking Clarke, one pinning her arms behind her back and the second trying to avoid her thrashing legs. She struggles like a cornered animal, snarling and spitting, mindless fire in her eyes, but they have two hundred pounds and two feet on her and in seconds, Lexa knows she’ll be done. And this is the battle Lexa throws herself into without a second thought.

With no plan except to get them away from her, Lexa acts on instinct, lunging forward with a knife drawn. A knee to the head of the injured guard, a knife to the back of one closing in on Clarke—they both drop, screaming. Lexa then whirls and slashes at the arm of the guard holding Clarke, and the shock of her attack stuns him enough for Clarke to fling her elbow up into his face, knocking him back. Lexa dives forward and buries her second knife in his chest, shoving him to the floor when she wrenches it back out.

Ten seconds, and it’s over; Lexa stands with her bloody knife in hand, panting, as she meets Clarke’s gaze. They stare for a long moment, Lexa with a wariness and Clarke simply slack-jawed at her sudden heroic appearance.

Lexa has no explanation, even now that she has a moment to breathe.

She’s spared from coming up with one when the pounding of combat boots in the hallway behind them reaches their ears—the two women burst into action again. Lexa dives left behind a giant potted plant and Clarke goes right, to grab her gun and take cover behind a column. They barely make it into hiding before six more guards come flying around the corner with guns of their own.

Lexa only has a knife to their guns—all she can do is keep her head down and cover her ears as a hail of gunfire rips through the hallway, deafening her, little fountains of plaster exploding out of the wall as the bullets bury themselves just above her. Across the room, Clarke fires blindly out of her cover, emptying fifteen rounds, then smoothly pulls out a new magazine from beneath her dress and reloads; but before she can turn to fire, Lexa signals at her with a clenched fist, then points at herself.

_Hold. I’ll draw fire._

Clarke nods and Lexa leans around the planter, only to jump back as another barrage of fire lights up her cover and the wall behind her, but not before she’s clocked the location of the six guards, all of them crouched in cover just like the two women.

As soon as Lexa draws back, Clarke angles out of cover and fires four shots while they’re distracted. By the shouts, she hits at least two guards. The ones still alive fire upon her instead, forcing her to draw back, and the moment they do, Lexa jumps to her feet and flings her knife at the nearest target, dropping him too. Three to go.

Except now she’s left without a weapon--she looks across the hallway to signal this to Clarke, only to find the blonde signaling the same: out of ammunition. Only so much room beneath such a sleek dress.

The fire alarm blares through the hotel, ringing in her skull. In the distance, she can hear the screams of the guests. To top if off, the automatic sprinkler system activates and dumps gallons of water down on them, drenching both women and slicking the floors. This is all going to hell: somewhere deep in her head, beneath the blood rush, she knows that more guards will be here within seconds and half of the city’s force of first responders will surround the building within minutes. If she doesn’t get out now, she’ll be dead or captured. And that’s if she can get past the guards blocking her escape now.

For the first time, fear punches through the wall of sheer adrenaline that had blocked Lexa’s emotions from interfering with her action. Fury and desperation and panic begin to flood through those breaches and as she looks across the hall to see the same reflected in Clarke’s eyes, her mind clouds over. This was a terrible mistake. She should have left the girl behind. Now they’ll both die here.

Then one sound, beneath the chaos and the cacophony of everything else, gives her hope: the futile clickclickclick of an empty gun.

Clarke isn’t the only one out of bullets. Now Clarke, Lexa, and the guards are on even footing.

The wall of adrenaline goes back up. That tiny window of opportunity of an empty gun is all they need before the two women throw themselves out of cover and launch at their attackers, colliding like football players and lashing out with fists, heads, feet. Lexa incapacitates the guard closest to her with a shot to the inside of his knee before occupying herself with another man trying to reload his gun, as Clarke takes on the third guard. She watches Clarke only in her periphery, to make sure she’s not overpowered, but something about seeing the girl fight, this time on her side, sends a wave of pride through her. It’s not a thing of beauty or grace, but pure, back-against-the-wall ferocity, borne only of a need to break through the line and run. It’s all instinct: a head to the nose, an elbow to the chest, a knee to the stomach, a fist to the throat; Lexa throws everything she has at them.

The men, trained as they are, recover from their initial surprise quickly, and that’s when the tide changes: Lexa hasn’t dropped her man quick enough and he catches her arm, pinning it to her side in an unbreakable, vise-like grip. No number of lashing kicks at his legs will free her--panic floods her chest.

And then Clarke comes from nowhere and smashes her gun into his face, forcing him to releases Lexa, who immediately lunges forward to disable a man coming at Clarke from behind as Clarke puts down the one who had Lexa pinned. Now it’s as beautiful as it is brutal, their tandem fighting, their instinctual alliance.

There’s no sense to the fact that earlier they were threatening to kill each other: escape comes before all else, and there’s no enmity among fugitives.

Once Lexa delivers another punch, grabs her knives, and drops the final guard, they’re through, the men collapsing to the floor as they shout weakly for help from their comrades. Lexa’s first instinct is to turn to Clarke, reach for her as the girl pulls herself upright, grimacing in pain. They stare at each other, wary, frozen for seconds that feel like minutes...and then the sirens and screams echoing through the hallways breaks back into their awareness.

_“Run,”_ Lexa gasps.

Clarke is just a half step behind Lexa as they race through the hotel, Lexa in her catering disguise and Clarke in her thousand-dollar dress that she had been so convinced would protect her. They’re soaked to the bone but unable to feel a thing beneath the heavy numbing blanket of pure fear and adrenaline that dulls all other senses.

_Get out, get out, get out_ \--left, right, left, left, straight, no idea where they’re going and no idea where an exit may be, knowing only that they have to keep moving. Then they skid around yet another corner and Lexa lets out a hoarse shout of victory at a glowing green exit sign over a fire door, sixty yards down the hallway. She lowers her head and sets to it.

“Wait, wait!” Clarke calls.

A ludicrous request when safety is so close and the guards are only steps behind--and yet Lexa waits, sliding to a stop on the wet floor and turning back to see Clarke kneeling and pulling at the straps on her heels.

“What are you doing?” Lexa demands.

“I can’t run in these!” Clarke rips off the heels and throws them aside, before pulling at the hem of her gown. Tossing them aside for the investigators to find.

With a groan of irritation, Lexa scrambles back and grabs the shoes as Clarke rips a slit in the dress to free her legs for their run. She looks up at Lexa in confusion: “What are you doing? Leave them!”

_“How new are you at this?”_ Lexa bellows incredulously. “You can’t just leave it--”

“Oh fuck y--just run!”

 Despite the vitriol and the incredulity, they end up side by side again, sprinting down the length of the corridor, through the door, and out into the night.

 

* 

 

The lack of police cars outside the hotel doesn’t mean they’re in the clear. Block after block they sprint, legs fully extended, lungs burning for a lack of oxygen, trying to put as much distance between them and their crime as possible--but there’s also a strange, settled harmony between them. They run together, not looking sideways at each other nor back at any potential pursuers, nor going their separate ways at a corner. They just run, as fast as they possibly can, stride for stride.

They’re still close enough to hear the fire alarm ringing out from the hotel, and somewhere in the sky comes the heavy thrumming of a helicopter. The wails of police sirens grow louder. Normally, they’d simply keep running to put the sirens as far behind them as possible, put the sound out of their heads, but then Clarke realizes it:

“They’re coming down this street, toward the hotel,” she gasps.

Lexa spots the blue and red lights in the distance, roaring towards them.

There are few things in this world more suspicious than two disheveled, bloody, soaking wet women sprinting away from the scene of the crime, one of them barefoot and holding a gun and the other laden down with kitchen knives she stole from a catering company.

Without missing a step, Lexa makes a split-second decision and hooks her arm into Clarke’s, throwing them sideways into the narrow mouth of an alley. She dives for the first cover she sees, a doorway alcove in the brick wall, pulling Clarke along with her—the alcove is just shallow enough for them to press into, with Clarke pressed against Lexa and Lexa’s back pressed against the rough brick. She has one hand over Clarke’s mouth, the other gripping her side.

After all of that frenetic motion and energy, that’s where they freeze, out of sight of the street. Not more than five seconds after Lexa pulls Clarke into the alley, the cop cars go blazing past them in a rush of wind and screaming sirens and light. The light from the streetlamps and car headlights doesn’t penetrate very far into the narrow alley, leaving them in darkness and praying for the cops—and any of Cage’s guards who might have been in pursuit—to pass the alley without a second glance.

Lexa breathes slowly, her chest rising against Clarke’s back. After a moment, Clarke hazards a breath too—the warm air of her exhale flows between Lexa’s fingertips and the girl seems to realize that she’s holding Clarke quiet in the first place—determined to move as little as possible, Lexa slowly drags her fingers away from Clarke’s lips, down the side of her neck, and then lets her hand drop to her side.

Clarke shivers.

The strange harmony they had while running becomes a strange intimacy as they stand in the alcove, the fight or flight instinct fading from their bodies by degrees as the seconds tick by without sight or sound of any pursuer. No matter their opposition to each other, for the few moments in the hotel and the few moments of their escape, they created a complicated bond and trust in the face of near-death--a bond not easily broken. As it stands, coming down from an adrenaline high and all senses still on high alert, exhaustion begins to replace their frenetic energy, soaking into their limbs, deadening the muscles. Lexa, with a heavy sigh, drops her head back against the brick; Clarke too relaxes her body against Lexa’s, leaning back into her.

They made it.

The weight and fullness of Clarke’s body, uncoiled and languid now that they’re safe, takes Lexa by surprise—the comfort of another person’s closeness is not something she expected after what just happened, and it’s definitely not anything she’s used to. It would be far easier to extricate herself from whatever connection they share if Clarke’s physical presence wasn’t commanding so much of Lexa’s senses.

“Shit,” Clarke says, breathing it out on a heavy exhale. The sound of her voice marks the endpoint of their frozen moment—they both realize, finally, that they no longer need to be pressed into the alcove. Even still, seconds pass before Clarke goes lurching forward away from Lexa, on unsteady bare feet, taking several steps forward so that she can check both mouths of the alley before turning back.

Lexa, on the other hand, stays tucked in the alcove, hands in her pockets, watching Clarke with a wary eye. Even with a torn dress, with no shoes, with her wet hair plastered to her forehead, the blonde is just as likely to attacker her as she is to turn and run. Lexa’s learned by now not to expect an automatic victory. But regardless of the outcome, Lexa won’t show emotion, be it fear or pride or amusement. Reveal no weakness, expose no vulnerability.

“Thank you,” Clarke chokes out instead.

A career contract killer, still flushed red from a breakneck escape, with a pocketful of knives she just pulled out of bodies--and she has no idea how to deal with gratitude.

Especially from a girl she tried to kill just days before.

Lexa swallows to strengthen her voice and gather a semblance of her ruthless facade. “Did you have a plan?” she asks, scoffing. “Or was your intention to get yourself killed and hope that Cage would go down for it?”

“Well, I had a plan,” Clarke barks back, then weakens. “Up until I saw he had a date.”

Lexa raises a brow. She was going to seduce him? “Brilliant,” she drawls sarcastically, ignoring the curling, prickling feeling in her stomach.

“Oh, because poison in the glass was so creative.”

“It would have been fine if an amateur hadn’t gotten underfoot.”

_“Amateur?”_

“After tonight? Yes.”

“Then why’d you come after me when I followed Cage?” Clarke asks, raising her chin. That question isn’t quite as biting as their back-and-forth acid; it’s much more serious, much more probing, and Lexa refines her tone accordingly.

“To stop you from taking my kill.”

Clarke narrows her eyes. “But you jumped into the fight when I was losing.”

Valid point. And they fought together, and escaped side-by-side—and at that, Lexa realizes she’s still holding Clarke’s shoes. She spends a long time picking her words. “Even you’re too good to lose trying something as stupid as what you did in the hallway.” With that, she tosses the heels to Clarke’s feet.

It’s a weak excuse, they both know it. But Lexa can’t come up with a better one, even to herself--she’ll never know why she jumped in. Reflex. Instinct. Meanwhile, Clarke’s lips twitch with the hint of a smirk.

“So, pity? That’s why?”

“Whatever you want to call it,” Lexa fires back. “But don’t take it as a free pass. Take it as a warning.”

“You’re a big fan of warnings without follow through.”

God, this girl is arrogant. She’s unlike any killer, or any target, Lexa has ever come across: she towers above her station, she flaunts the unspoken rules, and she derives joy from thwarting Lexa. And she does all of this standing there looking like that, a black eye forming, soaked to the bone, her dress clinging to her body. Clarke challenges her and infuriates her, and yet Lexa can’t forget that one terrifying moment when she had almost been overpowered and Clarke came to her rescue.

This girl is different, and Lexa doesn’t know what to make of her.

And so, as has always been her rudder in the storm, she goes back to her work. “After tonight, I’m not saving you again,” Lexa tells Clarke. “Nor will I hesitate to kill you. I don’t want to. So let me kill him and we’ll be done with it.”

“I’m not standing aside.”

Of course not. If she weren’t so stubborn, she wouldn’t be nearly as captivating, for better or for worse.

“Fine then,” Lexa snaps, “Enjoy practicing your seduction skills and hoping he doesn’t have an escort the next time you see him.”

All of their goodwill, all of that harmony has at last evaporated. The ceasefire remains in place only as long as tonight, and then they both know they’ll be back at each other’s throats. Clarke glares as she says, “My skills are fine. I’m looking forward to seeing the look on your face after I’m done with him.”

Lexa doesn’t let her see a hint of it now. Instead, she just nods down the alley, indicating Clarke’s instructed path of exit.

“Goodnight, Clarke.”

Clarke, naturally, turns and stomps toward the other end of the alley, which Lexa really should have predicted. She stays in the alcove corner, feeling oddly defeated, long after Clarke’s footsteps have faded. She sighs. It’s going to be a long walk home.

 

* 

 

Lexa stumbles into her apartment at 3 in the morning, aching, bleeding, and drained. The sense of defeat gnaws at her; the sense of something darker, something looming on the horizon after tonight’s confrontation with Clarke, is a heavier weight that she tries to ignore. She simply wants to clean her wounds, shower, and curl up in clean sheets and sleep for the next twelve hours, then cleanse her body and mind when she wakes.

The problem is, her living room glows blue with the light of the television, and a figure sits with their back to the door, silhouetted against the screen.

Lexa goes for the gun she keeps taped beneath the kitchen table--she freezes when the figure turns at the sound. Then recognition dawns.

“Anya.” Lexa breathes a sigh of relief.

Instead of replying, Anya arches a judgmental brow, then turns back to the television screen with a huff, leaving Lexa to follow her gaze. After a moment, Lexa recognizes the news report on the screen: an aerial shot of the hotel and a ticker that reads “Panic at the Plaza.” With a sinking heart, she grimaces at the sight of two dozen cop cars, and the ant swarms of police officers and guests and hotel staff alike, having been evacuated after the gunfire. The female reporter on scene announces that investigators are “searching for two women who may be persons of interest in the case.”

Anya just shakes her head.

“You fucking idiot.”

 

*

 

Clarke’s fake architecture firm is in chaos.

Following the events of Hurricane Clarke, as Octavia had taken to calling it, the media had predictably descended on the Central Plaza Hotel, speculating and searching for any scraps of info they could spin into a story. A gunfight in a hotel? There has to be something there. The journalists are smart enough to realize that Cage’s private security team hadn’t started a war among themselves and that they had to have been shooting at someone, but the guards won’t talk and the security footage has been replaced with an endless loop of documentaries about Edgar Allen Poe (Raven’s calling card), the media is left with wild theories and conflicting reports, which play nonstop at Clarke’s office. They’ve all drowned the sound out by now.

The only person working more relentlessly than the journalists on the case is the one who wiped the security footage in the first place: Raven. She’s recruited Harper to help her with all the extra work and the two of them sit all day at separate banks of computers, chattering back and forth about everything they’re searching for, everything they’re finding.

_“Anything on Cage?”_

_“Still trying to find the names of his guards.”_

_“Check hospital admission records.”_

_“We still need that plane ticket for Clarke.”_

_“On it. Can you grab me the social media of the catering team again?”_

And on and on and on. But loud as they are, they’re drowned out by Octavia, who stomps all over the office, carrying an assortment of weapons from their storage room to the conference and piling them up, the same way she piles up all of her various ideas for Lexa once she and Clarke hunt her down. Of anyone, Octavia had been the most enraged by Clarke’s story of what happened: she’ll blame anyone but herself or her team for failure, and right now, Lexa is her one and only target for the disaster at the hotel.  Constantly on her heels in Monroe, who adds to the chaos by trying to talk Octavia down. But she’s readying for war and there’s no stopping her, so the futile words just crowd the space in everyone’s head, making it impossible to think straight.

Clarke, however, somehow manages to filter all of it out. She’s pacing too, but with anxiety instead of bloodlust, because Kane’s voice in her ear is low and dangerous in its frustration, even over the phone.

“Yes, sir, we’re well ahead of the police,” she assures him, again. “They have nothing. I covered all my tracks, left nothing behind. Yes, sir. I--yes, sir.”

She swallows an angry sigh and runs a hand back through her hair, making it stand on end. He’s especially difficult to placate this time. Then again, Clarke has rarely ever fucked up like this.

“I understand,” she continues. “We’re pursuing every avenue. It won’t be long. In the meantime, regarding my leave of absence...”

She’s about to beg on her hands and knees against the forced sabbatical--he’s forcing her to get out of town until the heat dies down-- when Raven’s voice cuts through the din.

Not with her tone, but with four simple words.

“Clarke, is this her?”

Kane and all his grievances disappear--he continues talking in her ear but Clarke can’t hear him over the pounding of her heart as she rushes to Raven, zeroing in on a photo on one of the monitors. It’s a social media post, a picture of a group of caterers stealing a moment away from their cooking to gather together and smile for the camera. “Great night with these saints at the Plaza!” reads the caption. It would be entirely unremarkable if not for a solitary figure in the background, her surprised face turned fully toward the camera, as if she hadn’t been invited to join the picture and had no idea it was being taken until the flash went off. Dark hair, full lips, smooth face...

“It’s her,” Clarke says, voice barely above a whisper in her awe. We found her. Lexa’s face might as well be a winning lottery ticket for the galvanizing shock of breathless excitement that fills her. “Kane, I’ll have to call you back.”

She ends the call without waiting for his response and leans closer to the screen, transfixed by Lexa’s face. This is a tangible lead, a real connection, a piece of her Clarke finally has a hold on--she can’t look away. The rest of her team gathers around.

“That’s her?” Octavia asks.

“That’s her,” Clarke says, breathless. “Lexa.”

“Shit, and you couldn’t beat her in a fight? You let her steal not one but _two_ of your guns?”

Clarke glares. “She beat me but would have destroyed you. Raven, where did you get this?”

“Social media from one of the caterers,” Raven answers. “Public post. Just had to sift through a lot.”

“Can you use it?”

Raven hums as she considers the picture. “It’s grainy...but yes. I have some facial recognition tech that is admittedly questionable, but...”

“We kill people for a living.”

“True. I’ll have the results in a few days.”

“That’s fine.” Her heartbeat picks up in her chest. “Once you save the picture, wipe it from the internet and see if you can get it off the caterer’s phone, too. I want us to be the only ones who have it.”

A simple enough command and Clarke is already racing ahead of it, coming up with new plans for what she’ll do when they’re able to pinpoint Lexa’s location, thinking of ways to go after both of her targets, but Raven’s voice breaks through again.

“Why?” Raven asks, confused. “We leave it up and the cops will find it sooner or later and go after her for us.”

Clarke stops short. Before she can answer, Monroe chimes in. “That’s a good point. If someone else takes her out, that’s way better for us.”

“I agree,” Harper says.

“But--O?” Clarke asks, turning to Octavia. Octavia is the only one more ruthless than Clarke, plus she’s far less reserved and strategic--and she’s the one who wants to kill Lexa the most. But Clarke’s heart sinks when she sees that the fury has faded from Octavia’s eyes, replaced by doubt.

“They have a point, Clarke. If she’s still alive or free after we kill Cage, then we go after her. But deleting that picture just makes our job harder.”

“And if she kills Cage in the meantime?” Clarke demands. She’s never objected to logic like this before but for some reason, she can’t help it now, no matter how illogical her own arguments are. She says them with the most force she can muster. “We need to track her down and make sure she doesn’t get to Cage first. She might even lead us to him, and that’s even better. And if the police are hunting her too, that makes our job harder.”

The pull between obedience to their captain and their own accumulated wisdom silences her team for several seconds. “Clarke--”

“And on top of that, we need to know she’s not coming after us,” Clarke presses. “Or telling the police about us if she’s captured.”

“What can she tell them?” Raven asks, an alarming undercurrent of suspicion in her voice.

“Nothing,” Clarke says. “But I don’t want to risk anything.”

“So what do you propose we do?” scoffs Octavia. “Find her and then just sit on the info?”

“Find her, follow her, kill Cage, then kill her. Simple.”

Octavia’s disgust turns to resignation; Clarke is her superior, after all. “Fine. I’ll do it,” she sighs. “But I think the picture should stay up. Monroe, you and I will--”

“You?” Clarke asks. “No way. I will.”

Raven raises her eyebrows. “Uh, you won’t be doing anything, Clarke. Not for the next month. Kane is putting you on leave until the attention dies down.”

“We can put that off--”

“You’re going to disobey Kane and Jaha? And drag us into it?”

“I--” And she clamps her mouth shut, her gritted teeth silence proving her answer. She can argue with her team, but not with Kane’s orders. Efficiently crippled by that logic, Clarke drops into a nearby chair with a huff.

“Octavia,” Raven says, turning now that she’s won. “You’ll take the lead then. Do we keep the picture up?”

“Yes. We can track her down before the police do, get our info, then leave them to it.”

“Great. When I find this girl, you’re on recon. Find out where she lives, works, everything. You and Monroe will work in shifts.”

They make their plans and Clarke quietly simmers, glaring at them, incapacitated. Where there had previously been the thrill of victory, now fills with bitterness and the sting of betrayal. Not betrayal by her own team, but an odd, curling guilt that she has betrayed Lexa. She’s allowed another person into their private battle, their game. Lexa knows her, Lexa’s chased her, Lexa’s saved her. It feels wrong to switch the game like this. Octavia and Monroe could never understand the dalliance Lexa and Clarke have entered--they’ll break it, beyond repair, and the consequences of that worry her.

 

* 

 

Which is why she sneaks into the office in the middle of the night.

Clarke’s not anywhere near as adept with technology as Raven is, but she knows enough to get into the system and erase the picture of Lexa from the caterer’s social media and from the system of the girl who uploaded it. Raven’s facial recognition tech is still running, sifting through millions of images for a match; now, they’re the only ones in the city who will have the picture and will be able to find Lexa.

“Now we’re even,” Clarke mumbles.

Almost even. She’s about to leave when she notices the array of radios charging on a shelf. These are the ones they use for their missions, on a private channel, the ones Octavia and Monroe will have on them twenty-four seven, waiting for the moment Raven locates Lexa.

Without a second of hesitation, Clarke grabs one, tucks it into her pocket, and slips out of the office.

 

*

 

Two days later, that move pays off. Her temporary exile has officially begun; her flight to some corn town in the Bible Belt, as much a punishment as a getaway, is just eight hours away. Clarke is parked near the airport, eating a deli sandwich in the front seat of her car when the stolen radio chirps.

“Octavia, I have address,” comes Raven’s voice. “A coffee shop; she pops up in security footage from three different Sundays at 11am.”

There’s a pause before Octavia’s voice crackles through. “What’s the address?” When Raven reads it off, Octavia sighs. “Fuck, it’s 10:38. I’m more than forty minutes away. I’ll never make it.”

Clarke types the address into her GPS and gasps when the results come up.

She’s only fifteen minutes away.

She abandons her sandwich, throws her car into drive, and speeds off.

For the duration of the drive to the coffee shop, Clarke prays she’s not too late to catch Lexa. She spends almost none of it coming up with a plan for what to do if she does find her—a fact only realized when she pulls up to the curb half a block away from the unremarkable facade of the little free-market shop. Should she go in, order a coffee for Lexa and have the barista call out her name? Smirk at her when Lexa comes up to collect? Join her at the table? Wait for her to come out and confront her on the street?

And then her decision is made for her: even half a block away, that lean form is unmistakable, accentuated the way it is by her jeans and motorcycle jacket as Lexa strides through the door, a tinted black helmet in hand. It matches her bike, a sleek black Yamaha built for speed, just like her. Get in, do the job, get out before anyone can react. She pops the helmet on and becomes anonymous to the world behind the tinted glass, then climbs onto the bike and rumbles onto the street. Clarke starts her car too, pulling away from the curb.

The sight of the girl weaving smoothly through traffic, splitting lanes and sliding into spaces between cars with a hair’s breadth of extra space, shoots a dark thrill through Clarke. Lexa moves fluidly as always, but with no true sense of urgency, not knowing she’s been found. Clarke eases up on the gas and drops back several car lengths—the hunt begins.

 

*

 

The seamier side of town is a safe haven for people like Lexa, wishing to accomplish something immoral and avoid attention doing it, but it requires a certain amount of focus to keep her head down and yet remain alert for any potential dangers. She needs to get in, get her supplies, talk to her contacts, and get out. It should be the only thing on her mind...and it would be, if not for the beautiful blonde girl trailing her in an obnoxiously cliche black BMW. She spotted Clarke fifteen blocks ago. Clarke is champion of handheld explosives and ill-advised firefights in the middle of a crowded hotel and has nonetheless made a valiant attempt at subtlety, predictably falling far short as she follows Lexa deeper into the labyrinthine neighborhoods. As soon as she saw her, Lexa changed her planned destination: on a Sunday like this, the docks will be empty, quiet, and isolated.

Ever nonchalant, Lexa pulls off the main street and onto the docks, rolling slowly between the shipping containers and piles of crates and the warehouse equipment; the slow, low drone of the tide against the pylons is the only sound, and it’ll cover any echoes of a fight, if that’s what is to come. Clarke’s black BMW doesn’t follow her, but only because that’s too obvious even for Clarke. She’ll park somewhere on the road and come in on foot, with her guard down, because she still thinks she has the element of surprise--and Lexa will be waiting. She parks her own bike out of sight on the side of an empty warehouse, ensures there’s a clear route forward if she has to run, and then makes a show of walking in, to be sure Clarke follows her.

Then she waits, crouched just inside the doorway.

Minutes tick by. She rubs her thumb along the barrel of her gun—the burnished metal shines along the length of the barrel from years of that habit.

And then, at last, footsteps. The moment reminds her of their first clash, when she had ducked into the alley and Clarke surprised her with some sort of flash grenade, but there will be no such surprises now. She’s prepared, and Clarke’s guard is down, and there’s not a camera in sight to help her. With this in mind, Lexa had planned to burst out from behind the wall, firing shots; at the last second, when Clarke’s footsteps are almost to the door, she changes her mind, and calmly steps into the doorway, right into Clarke’s path. She takes aim, the gun held high.

“Fu--” Clarke nearly stumbles with the force of her surprise and her hands jerk out of the pockets of her hoodie in an instinctive attempt to defend herself--but she’s empty-handed and she knows she stands no chance. Her face twists in a scowl for a fraction of a second, but Lexa has no time to derive any satisfaction before it’s back to a steely-eyed determination, as if she plans to talk her way out of this.

With a deep breath, Clarke raises her hands to shoulder height, palms up, surrendering.

“Just...listen to what I have to say before you shoot.”

Not what Lexa was expecting. But Clarke is the type to try to talk her way out of things before attacking—Lexa tightens her grip. “Every time I don’t kill you, I end up with a headache and my life gets more difficult than it was before.”

“What would you rather do, kill me or kill Cage Wallace?”

“I can do both,” Lexa says, her lip curling.

“Probably,” Clarke agrees. When Lexa does no more than scowl, she cautiously lowers her hands. “But you can’t do it for months. Wallace knows there’s a hit out on him now, he’s taken steps to protect himself. Federal investigators are looking for both of us. You won’t be able to get near him until winter.”

The embers in Lexa’s eyes flare at the suggestion that it would take more than a week for her to kill Cage—if Clarke would get out of her damn way.

“Telling me this is why you asked me not to shoot you?”

Clarke shifts under the heat of it, but keeps her chin high.

“Do your employers have the patience to wait that long?” she asks Lexa.

They both know the answer to that.

“Cage Wallace will be spending the next month at his estate on an island in the Mediterranean,” Clarke presses. “Security will be at an all-time high after the farmer’s market and the hotel. He owns more than half the island; tourism will be restricted, boats in and out will be noted, guests at the hotel will be interviewed. The place is like a fortress.”

“I’m aware.”

“You or I might find a way onto the island, but even if we didn’t get in each other’s way, which we will, we’d stick out among the tourists, we’d stick out with no reason to be there, and we’d stick out as solo travelers.”

Clarke pauses, giving Lexa the opportunity to work out the solution, but the girl with the gun is more irritated than intrigued, and her finger twitches against the trigger, leaving Clarke to explain it.

“There’s one way around all of that. We need to get onto the island somehow, and we need a reason to be there. Cage doesn’t own the entire island--there’s one hotel, and that one hotel is hosting an event that will be our way in.”

Lexa raises a brow. “Our?”

Clarke’s cheeks flush. At first, Lexa thinks it must because she simply misspoke; but then Clarke announces her plan. “The hotel hosts these couple’s retreats, like therapy. They’re three weeks long--a hugely popular program. If we--”

_“What?”_

“Listen--” Clarke snaps, advancing forward a step until Lexa raises a brow and reminds her of the gun in her face. She swallows her pride and continues in a quieter, more controlled voice: “It’s a cover. The hotel hosts a therapy retreat for couples. Twelve couples, twenty-four people, three weeks on the island, activities and therapy sessions and everything. It’s the perfect way to get in and stay there unnoticed while we figure out a way past Cage’s defenses.”

It beggars belief--she really is a terrible 007 imitation, as Lexa had called from the start. But this plan in particular leaves her stunned and at a loss for words for several long seconds. _A couple’s retreat?_

“You—what the hell kind of plan is that? And why are you saying _‘we’_ are going to figure out a way past Cage’s defenses? _I_ am.”

“Because if you set foot on that island alone without a reason to be there, they’ll pick you out in a second,” Clarke says, anger rising. “No one will look twice at a couple there for the retreat. It’s famous, popular, the last spot is being filled by a lottery later this week—but I have a girl who can get us in. Then we kill Cage together, both our employers are satisfied, and we never have to see each other again.”

“That is inane,” Lexa sputters, half-laughing and half-shouting. “And it’ll never work.”

“It’s the only thing that will work.” And then, after a pause: “You need me.”

“I need you dead,” Lexa shoots back.

“Then use me for the plan and kill me after!” Clarke shouts. “But if you’re too proud to admit this is a good plan, you’re a shitty hitwoman anyway and I have nothing to fear. Killing Cage Wallace is my first concern: what’s yours?”

Lexa swallows hard and squeezes her finger. The way she tips the gun is so subtle that when she pulls the trigger, and the gunshot rips through the air, Clarke actually believes Lexa shot her. It takes a moment before she realizes she’s still alive.

Lexa aimed just over Clarke’s shoulder, so close that it would have grazed her shoulder if she had inhaled in that exact moment.

Anya always did complain that Lexa is too dramatic.

But Lexa intentionally missed, and for that, Clarke throws caution to the wind: there’s a gun in her face but something stronger in her eyes as she steps forward until the gun is just inches from her forehead. It begs the question. It demands a decision. _What are you gonna do?_

_Put the job before your emotions._

It’s like Anya’s right there in her ear, repeating that command until it’s drilled into her bones. Put the job before your emotions. Because emotions get people killed; emotions let targets get away. Lexa has always prided herself on being the perfect killer, with no emotions--so why is Clarke throwing her like this?

She’s not. Simple as that. Lexa refuses to let Clarke get to her.

She lowers the gun.

“You have five minutes to convince me.”

Clarke knows that’s a yes.


End file.
